


The Eagle

by ziggy



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 09:57:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19423645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ziggy/pseuds/ziggy
Summary: Maedhros' rescue from a different perspective.





	The Eagle

**Author's Note:**

> I have committed canon-sacrilege by subbing Thorondor for Gwahir. Just felt right:)

The Eagle

It was utterly silent but for the wind. It swept through the mountains, through the three great peaks and swirled around the hanging valleys and corries gouged out of the rock in long, long ages past. Here the mountain was smooth, a cliff of staggering height and no little trails or ledges but one, high high up where a cave opened in the cliff, like a mouth. Sometimes black smoke poured from the cave, thick and choking with a stench of death.

It was from this cave that the cacophony of noise came now. Shouting, jeering, harsh sounds like the Corvus. 

Gwahir watched as the Misbegotten poured from the cavern mouth and on to high ledge above the escarpment. Like black beetles they swarmed over the peak of the Mountain, Thangorodrim. Their thick voices were loud, desecrating. A heavy clank of metal came from amongst their jeering as they pulled, dragged something behind them, something that struggled and swore and shouted so that words echoed off the rock face, words that the Eagle had heard at times from the mouths of the Misbegotten. Gwahir did not know what they meant: there was no equivalent in The Tongue.

Some Misbegotten must have done something, Gwahir thought. This was a punishment, for the wriggling, struggling thing they dragged out. It was beaten down and kicked and bound. Gwahir preened his feathers, one golden eye on the Misbegotten. 

There was something strange about this one they punished. It was different. Its skin was pale and its head was copper-bronze like the eagle’s own feathers.

The punished Misbegotten suddenly surged to its feet and threw off its captors and Gwahir stared: this was an Earthborn, not Misbegotten! One of the silver-tongued, flame-eyes returners, a child of Fire. He cocked his head and turned so he could regard what happened. The Earthborn struggled briefly and then the Misbegotten hordes threw him down the mountain. Gwahir’s feathers ruffled and he half spread his wings in shock and thought he might swoop down but the Earthborn did not fall to the earth but stopped a little way down from the top. Gwahir blinked and cocked his head; a long chain had caught the Earthborn so he did not fall.

He was there for many hours and the Misbegotten did not leave but jeered and threw missiles at him. He swore and cursed up them in their own speech and they laughed and spat and jabbed down their long spears, gouging his flesh.

After days and nights, the Evil One himself came. He stood above the Earthborn and mocked him, then changed his own form into long dark shadows and twined itself, writhed and fingered at the child of Fire and he did not cry out but endured. Gwahir could see his teeth clenched and his silver-flame eyes tightly closed.

Gwahir returned to his King and dipped his beak respectfully. There is one of the Earthborn who hangs upon the cliff, one of the silver-tongued, sharp-eyed children of Fire. The Evil One torments him without mercy but he will not give in.  
Thorondil went with Gwahir the next day and they circled high, high above, above the smoke and din of Angband, high upon Thangorodrim. Thorongil cocked his head and opened his beak to cry through the clear, clear air to the Earthborn below.

The Earthborn lifted his head defiantly, and when he looked up his eyes were full of light and fire, his head seemed wreathed in small flickering flames.

‘Tell Manwë then, you old vultures!’ His voice was hoarse like the crow. Not like the silver-tongue of the Earth-children after all, thought Gwahir, and he watched his King wheel sharply in rebuke. ‘Tell him how I have been maimed and tortured and let him laugh! But I will not yield!’

A breath of wind beneath the wing feathers, tipping him slightly, listing, ruffling the pinions...Gwahir let the air rush through his nostril, through his feathers, over his head...Is this Manwë, he asked his King and the nictitating membrane closed over his King’s eyes briefly in acquiescence.

Gwahir felt warmed by the Presence and then realised another stood behind him distantly yet, but there nevertheless,… the Allfather, the Great Eagle himself. Peace washed through Gwahir...

But the reedy cry of the Earthborn broke through the calm of the upper air. ‘Tell him I will be damned! I will not yield!’

Sacrilege, Thorongil said but he was not angry and he did not wheel again a rebuke, or dive against the Earthborn. Instead he looked at the stretched weak body...and Gwahir felt a twinge of compassion such as he did for a young eaglet that was weak and had to be pushed from the nest to be dashed upon the rocks.

Gwahir wanted to help the Earthborn but a stern voice forbid him. 

Watch, Thorongil told Gwahir and with a sweep of his mighty wings, the King raced away into the sun.

The eagle watched, as he was bid. But it was hard to see the child of Fire hanging from one pinion. It was harder still to see how the Evil One still slipped and writhed over his body in darkness and how the child endured, how he clenched his jaw and shut his silver-flame eyes.

The rain battered the thin body and Gwahir wondered how long he could last before he was carrion. Eagles prefer food still warm and this one surely could not last. How long had he hung there, railing in his own silver tongue against the Gods, calling upon his father, cursing both? Once or twice he called for his mother, and he did not curse her but wept. And at night, the Darkness covered him again, sliding over him, and he clenched his teeth and would not cry, would not yield.

During the day, the bright sun beat the child with fire, and the wind blasted him. Gwahir heard the voice of God in the wind. And still, the child of Fire would not yield.

Gwahir fell in love.

He no longer thought of the child of Fire as an Earthborn for it was too long since he had trod the earth. Gwahir swooped and flapped away the crows that would have gathered at the child’s poor feet for they were soft and had no scales to protect them or feathers to keep him warm. Gwahir gripped the peaked crag with his strong talons and wondered what would happen if he disobeyed his King and brought the child water, and food, and wrenched the child from the cliff. But Manwë was in his mind and he was sworn.

A long time it was that Gwahir maintained his watch. The Evil One no longer came and tormented the child and Manwë was no longer in Gwahir’s mind. But the child lived still and so it must be the Evil One made it so. Or perhaps it was because he was a child of Fire and they endured longer, for many an Earthborn would have died by now.

0o0o

From his crag, Gwahir looked out across the land. Much had happened and a great army of Earthborn had gathered on the shores of a far-off lake. His brothers told him of it. They were aflutter with excitement.

‘The First Earthborn have returned from Over the Sea. They will fight the Evil One and his Fire-Drakes. They will cast Him from our mountains and we can go home.’ 

Gwahir did not really know what they meant by Home. This was Home. But he was intrigued nonetheless and wished to go and see. His King allowed him to leave his guard because the child was weak now and had stopped shouting his defiance against Manwë. He had stopped speaking at all. He had almost stopped moving. 

Gwahir was permitted to fly in great, high circles above the camp. Tiny peaks of colour dotted the earth and streams of colour fluttered in the breeze from tall spires. Dots of fire showed where the Earthborn gathered in small groups. There were two camps, on either side of the lake and Gwahir was told by his brother that on one side were the Sons of Fire, and on the other were the Sons of Water for how else had they survived the Great Ice?

He did not know what else to ask. So he returned to his crag and his beloved child of Fire. 

It was not long after, that he spied a lone Earthborn in the valley below. It stumbled about, lost and in danger, thought Gwahir, for the Misbegotten would soon spy him. He thought about flying down and speaking to the Earthborn but Gwahir had not yet learned the Speech of the Earth-born like his King, and what would he say?

So he watched. And shook his feathers when the Earthborn’s reedy voice lifted on the air and drifted through the rocks and mountains, echoing off the cliffs. He cocked his head and blinked. The Earth-born must want the Misbegotten to find him, he thought. Perhaps he was a weak one sent out alone to find death.

But movement on the bare mountain cliffs caught his eye. His child had stirred. A strangled noise came from him and Gwahir cocked his head, watched with bright eyes for he did not want his child to die.

Now the Earthborn wanderer looked up and his gaze caught on the child hanging from one pinion. The Earthborn standing below stopped dead and stared, mouth open aghast. Then he began scrambling amongst the rocks, dangerously, Gwahir realised. Gwahir cried out before he could stop himself and the wanderer paused and looked up, saw Gwahir poised upon the high crags. He lifted his voice and the cries were strange to Gwahir, soft mewls like the young deer he caught.

There was a rasping croak, like the Corvus and at first he did not recognise the voice of his own dear child. So weak, so harsh.More like the Misbegotten themselves he was become so battered and stretched and thin he was.

Gwahir watched as the Earthborn below lifted something and held it up. The weak sunlight glittered on metal and he almost cried a warning for it was the long stemmed rod that sent death bolts into wing and breast! The Earthborn aimed it at the cliff face where his own beloved child was hung. Gwahir held his breath; the death bolt would pierce his child it was true but this was no life and he would have pushed an eaglet off the ledge long ago.

He whispered a prayer to the Great Eagle, Allfather, and felt the wind carry it away. He watched, his golden eye fixed upon the thin shape that was fixed by its pinion to the rock face. He prayed while its life was spent….

And nothing happened.

The Earthborn had dropped his death bolt and bowed his head. He made a strange sound, a keening and Gwahir realised that this one loved his own child of Fire as he did.

A whisper on the wind. He cocked his head to listen.

This one is dear to me. I am not yet done with him. Help them.  
Ah! Such joy leapt in Gwahir’s breast and he opened his great wings and swooped down to the newly arrived Earthborn, who looked up with desperate fear and love as Gwahir beat the air with his wings and landed. He cocked his head and fixed the Earthborn with his golden eye and thought the Earthborn spoke and the words sounded lovely and fluid, Gwahir did not understand. He crouched slightly and jerked his head towards his lovely, battered, weak child and the Earthborn spoke more but this time he seemed to understood and seized upon Gwahir’s wing, pulled himself up onto his back as he would one of their horses that tasted so sweet. And Gwahir leapt into the air.

0o0o

Surely with the cunning and metal of the Earthborn, he could release the child of Fire and take him back to the glittering camps?

It seemed not.

It had been unbearably hard to hover endlessly at the cliff face whilst the Earthborn hacked and sawed at the child’s wrist. The screaming was raw and terrible, like a fox whose entrails he tore out. And then it stopped.

Gwahir wondered if his child had died and felt the loss, but he would have escaped a life of misery and weakness if he had.

He flew the Earthborn towards the glittering camp and when the Earthborn clambered down, he clutched the limp body of his child in his arms. 

Gwahir moved his head towards the limp body, tenderness in his heart like he felt for eggs and eaglets, the drive to protect.

The Earthborn whom he had helped raised his hand to Gwahir and his reedy voice spoke words that Gwahir did not understand but he knew the intention and dipped his head. A crowd of Earthborns were running towards them, their glittering metal sticks in their hands and Gwahir leapt into the air quickly before they aimed them at him. He hoped they would not hurt his child and he surged upwards, feeling the air under his wings, caught a thermal and swept upwards.

0o0o

He saw his child once more, long years after. The wreath of flames around his head were feathers of course and had grown back, long and fluttering. He rode with the other Earthborn, whom he watched adoring. It was enough.

End


End file.
